1.6 Million people, mostly children, die every year from disease related to unclean water and poor sanitation. Life Force Kiosks, a non-profit operating in Kenya, was formed to help provide clean water to all.

Kick it with Kenya – a massive education campaign

I wanted to share some details about an incredible program called Kick it with Kenya. One of the biggest challenges to educating people in rural, developing areas on the benefits of safe water is not being able to reach large numbers of people at once. There are no television commercials, no magazine ads, and very few large organized events.

To get around this problem, we’ve started planning the second “Kick it with Kenya” inter-village soccer tournament. Soccer is one of the few activities that can draw a crowd, and we have some lofty ambitions. This year, we’re planning to reach roughly 16,000 people in over 40 villages. At each of the 40 regional games, we expect over 300 people to come watch. That presents a perfect opportunity for us to conduct educational seminars about critical health issues like clean water, distribute medicine and conduct HIV testing, and promote and sell water filters. At the finals in the larger town of Kitale, we expect around 3,000 people to attend! Opportunities to reach this many people in this region are extremely rare. Keep in mind that if we can educate one or two people from a household, the benefits will reach the rest of the people in the household. With an average household size of 8 people, that means we can potentially impact over 100,000 lives with this event.

As you might imagine, this event is not easy to pull off and is certainly not free. The total cost of the tournament is roughly $13,000, and we have very little time to raise the funds. If you’d like to help, your donation would be deeply appreciated. Here are some of the ways your donation could help:

$1,500 pays for the total salary, transportation, and promotional materials costs to demo the water filters and provide educational seminars at the 40 soccer games.

$800 provides a water filter for each of the 40 teams so the players can drink clean water while they practice and play in the tournament.

$350 pays for the promotional materials at the finals, where we expect to reach 3,000 people.

$13,000 pays for the entire event – and I’ll buy you dinner at almost any restaurant you choose. I’m pretty sure a plaque or small statue could also be arranged.

Hi Chris,
Yes, not only will we give away cups of water, but we’ll also donate a filter to every team so they’ll have clean water to drink while they practice and play. At the games, we’ll have clean water for the fans to drink plus lots of educational material on the benefits of clean water and promotional materials for our water filters. They held a smaller version of this program last year and it was very successful, so I’m really hopeful that we’ll be able to expand it this year.
-Jeremy